“Obama Call for Manufacturing Revival a Tough Goal” – Really? Don’t Be So Pessimistic, Sheepish. You are Proud American, Aren’t You?

Today’s Yahoo news talks about:

“President Barack Obama is making a strong election-year push for an economic revival “built on American manufacturing.”

But he faces an uphill slog, with little consensus even within his own party on how to do it.“

Trade and industry issues are interesting subjects to me because I like to call myself some kind of expert or something. I included some excerpts from the article and explain some additional points to them.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-call-manufacturing-revival-tough-095144615.html

Excerpt: “For decades, the United States has gradually shifted from creating goods to providing services. Fifty years ago, a third of U.S. jobs were in manufacturing. Now they account for just 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.“…

“Economists suggest plans to help boost manufacturing jobs may make more political sense than economic sense.”

Just political sense? Really? I am somewhat disappointed to hear this. Which economists said this? The accuracy of what they are saying may  depend on which area of economics they specialize in, and what kind of data they have been dealing with. Not every economists know everything, every aspects of economics, economy, or industrial competitiveness. Economists have their own specialization area and know better on their experties, not on everything.

To deepen economists’ understanding on economy or industrial competitiveness, they should also know business aspects in details, business mangagement, marketing, etc., and vice versa for business people.

I suggest that:

“World/US market is not an amass of same all, same things. It’s not a standardized, homogenized bunch of consumer, consumer demand. It’s rather a whole mass of all different, heterogeneous bunch of consumers, consumer demands, with different needs/wants/tastes.”

“The revival / survival of US manufacturing / business depends more on how to decompose this big chunk of consumer market into small consumer of different needs, wants, and tastes that share some common factors, detecting the potentially profitable product markets / consumer groups whose demands American manufacturing/business can meet well, and digging into those identified small consumer markets with accurate reading / understanding of consumer mind and developing right strategies to attract their product royalty and purchase behavior.”

“The seeming failure of US manufacturing / business, up to now, may be not only due to the declining price competitiveness of US products but also due to US businesses’ failure in reading consumer mind, or avoiding / neglecting to do so, and running business, producing products as the ways manufactures like, not as the ways consumer like.”

“The key point of US manufacturing / business in dealing with US and world consumer market is to do “Accurate Market Segmentation” and “Zooming into the Right Target Markets” that “well match” with the Competitiveness of US Manufacturing / Business (probably should not be only about “low price.”).”

An Extremely Simplified Example of World/Domestic Market Segmentation: “World market consumers have different needs/wants/desires for different product groups. Some low-income-consumers (Let’s call this “Mass/Standardized Market”) may want cheapest products that meet their basic living conditions, like food, humble clothing, shoes, that’s it. Middle-income consumers (Let’s call this “A-Bit-Differentiated Market”) may want a bit better products at slightly higher prices with more varieties/differentiation of products. Middle-upper, upper, upper-upper, super rich consumers (Let’s call this “Highly Differentiated / Affluent Market”) may go for untra high quality, designs, highly differetiated style/taste, sometimes even eccentric or novelty products that other people usually don’t own, the kind of products that meet their differentiated tastes and desire for signaling their social status or uniqueness, desire to differentiate themselves from the rest of others.” (apology for extreme simplicity of example)

What would be the sizes of each market segments in world market sales (as a whole of all merchandize trade / sales, or those of a product or product groups, for example): to hypothetically guess:

“Mass/Standardized Market” accounts for 50% of world consumption/sales (all all merchandize or a particular product group).

“A-Bit-Differentiated Market” accounts for 30% of world consumption/sales. 

“Highly Differentiated / Affluent Market” accounts for 20% of world consumption/sales.

“So, with given nature of US industrial competitiveness, “Which Market Segments” American Manufactures should go after, tackle?”

Excerpt: “This heavy attention on manufacturing may be misplaced, economists suggest.”

Here, it would be more desirable if the rhetoric changes from “this heavy attention on manufacturing” to “balancing out US industrial structure, including manufacturing to have more desirable US employment structure / job markets” with the revival of declining manufacturing sectors that could have been competitive but were declining anyway, not necessarily because of the death of US competitiveness but probably because of ”Lazy-fair” Approach (watch out the different spelling, instead of laissez-faire) of American businesses to domestic and international consumer demand / markets.”  

As the example of the Super Bowl Ads, “a Chrysler spot featuring actor Clint Eastwood that celebrates Detroit, suggesting it was near collapse until the residents “all pulled together.” Eastwood implores the nation to do the same.” (did “Some Republicans called the spot a valentine to Obama’s auto bailout“? the more proper way of calling it would be “the spot is the Ad incarnation of  “Obama’s Valentine Gift to Detroit,” or American Auto sector”)

So, we have to think about this point. If Detroit, or American autos, or Chrysler had fallen into almost collapse, but is being quickly recovered (though partially) yet) with some government help, ”Is this phenomenon happening because of the American Death of competitiveness in the auto industry?” or “American Business Failure in the industry because of wrong business decisions or doing correct things or negligence, although the industry may still have had remaining potential of staying relatively competitive if the companied have managed their business correctly?”

 

Excerpt: “It is still “20 percent more expensive to manufacture in the United States than it is anywhere else in the world.”: Interpretation - Low product price is an important factor, but not the only single determining factor. There are a lot of other contributing factors in determining the competitiveness of business or products in market competition.   

I respect Professors Robert Reich and Christina Romer for their role in correcting public misconception on recovering the US economy. But I cannot quite agree to their views on US manufacturing:

Excerpt: “Let’s not fool ourselves. We’re not going to have the kind of manufacturing-based economy we had 30 or 40 years ago,” says Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. And Christina Romer, who headed the president’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009-2010, says it is wrong to suggest that producing “real things” is more important than “services.” “American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers. Our earnings from exporting architectural plans for a building in Shanghai are as real as those from exporting cars to Canada,” she wrote. “The vast majority of jobs in the future are going to be created in the service sector, not the manufacturing sector,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for the consulting firm IHS Global Insight. He said he thought it was “a bit misleading” to focus so much on manufacturing. “I’m not sure why manufacturing rather than any other industry warrants tax incentives,” Gault added.

At first, all of us have to remember that how the service/retailing/financial sectors-oriented US economy has melted into (along with other factors though) the current Great Recession. I heard that only fools learn nothing from the lessons of past hardship. Please refer to: http://mikyunglim.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/additional-truth-about-us-inequality-and-economy-global-trade-perspective/

President Obama’s View that “US manufacturers are poised for a renaissance”, is not completely guaranteed with certainty, but quite possible if the right strategies to pursue it is found by someone.”

Economists alone probably can not find the right strategeis to achieve “Amerian Business Renaissance.” Because they only see the big chunk of pictures but miss all details inside it. Business people alone probably can not find it either, because they only see the details of their own business/product  areas but often miss, neglect the big picture of the world.

 

“Only the combined knowledge of both economics and business marketing would be able to produce the right strategies to pursue “US Business/Trade Renaisance.”

“There are political overtones to Obama’s State of the Union appeal for “an economy that’s built to last, an economy built on American manufacturing.”

Yes, that might be quite possible, depending on the creativity of pursuing individual(s).

Good News for the economy but bad news for overall employment?: “Despite the job losses, the U.S. remains an exporting powerhouse, right behind No. 1 China and vying with Germany for the No. 2 rank. U.S. factories have steadily become more advanced and automated, requiring only a fraction of the workers previously needed.”

The Additional Truth about US Inequality and Economy: “What’s Obama’s America’s Pacific Century Got to Do with Them?” – Global Trade Industry Perspective” (slightly revised)

Thesedays, the issue of “Inequality,” “Middle Class Crisis” has become an increasingly serious national issue over that of economy, being symbolized by the on-going outbursts of “Occupy Wall Street” protestors all over the nation.

Professor Robert Reich talked about six factors that have contributed to this US domestic condition of inequality, middle class crisis in his “The Truth about the US Economy”:

1. Flattening US wage regardless of economic growth over the last decades.

2. Increasing concentration of social wealth/ resources on super rich

3. Rich’s wealth-based political influence on government policies such as lowering taxes on super riches.

4. Huge budget deficits

5. Middle class divided

6. Anemic recovery

To complement Prof. Reich’s domestic perspective on this issue, I’d like to address the global perspective: the contribution of shifting global trade and industrial structure on shifting US job/employment structure and intensifying US inequality and middle class crisis. This global trade and industrial perspective also gives glimpse on

“What would be the Potential Impacts of President Obama’s latest introduction of the Era of America’s Pacific Century and the signing of US Free Trade Agreements including the one with South Korea on “Not Only Boosting the Devastated US Economy (if everything else works well)” “But Also Alleviating the US ill symptoms of Skewed Job/Employment Structure, Inequality, and Middle Class Crisis.”

Especially as China’s devaluation of currency is likely to help boost US exports to the country and the recent signing of US Free Trade Agreement with South Korea is going to boost US exports to the country starting from those of cars (if everything else works well),

“Pres. Obama’s Ushering of America’s Pacific Centry will contribute to creating more export-related middle class jobs in this country, help recover the health/balance of US economy and partially straighten up the skewed national employment structure toward finance, retailing, non-trade sector jobs by adding more export-related manufacturing jobs for middle class workers, and weaken income inequality and middle class crisis (unless Europe financial crisis further depresses the conditions of European and Asian economies).”

I post my previous blog post below because of its relevance with elaborating the points I made above: the shifted, skewed US job / employment structure over the last decades because of increasing globalization, global trade/industrial shifts, flight of traditional US manufacturing jobs to foreign countries of cheaper wages and increasing US outsourcing / imports, which, along with unbalanced domestic economic social structure of flattening wages, increasing concentration of social wealth on super rich that has increasingly exerted interest politics on US policy makings in their favor including lower taxes on them and loose business regulations and so on, have culminated to the current extreme income inequality and middle class crisis.

How to Fix the Economy III: The Big Picture

This was originally posted on 2011/07/23

The increasingly globalizing world economy, trade, and shift of industrialized and industrializing countries’ (US, Western Europe, more advanced Asian countries) manufacturing bases to cheaper producing countries of often less development have greatly contributed to the decreasing US jobs of low, medium value added  goods, the kind of jobs that have mainly supported US middle class. As a result of this trend of global market economy and industrialization in conjunction with the US market economy and industrial structure skewing toward increasingly relying on domestic consumption, the major source of US domestic employment has shifted away from the tradable sector (that includes manufacturing goods, engineering, computer design etc.) toward the non-tradable sector (that includes sectors such as construction, retailing, restaurants, hotel, etc.).” Dr. Spencer points out this US employment shift from the tradable sector to the non-tradable sector.

This global and US trend of industrialization and employment have (a) increasingly eliminated US middle class jobs that hire low-medium educated workers to produce low-medium value added products; (b) increased US jobs of producing high value added, tech/skill/information-intensive goods that hire highly educated workers (This trend appear to have contributed to the increasing concentration of US wealth/resources into the high-income group but minimal effect on creating and increasing the number of employment to replace the lost employment that has resulted from the shift of US manufacturing to foreign countries); and (c)  these shifts increased jobs in non-tradable sector that hire low-medium educated workers and pay lower wages with less fringe benefits, which have increasingly lowed the living quality and standard of middle class people in this country.

The combined effects of this global and domestic industrialization and employment trend, along with the troubles in US social, economic systems that have drained/shifted wealth/resources from the low/middle class to the high income class that had culminated to the US housing, health care, and financial markets crisis and the current great recession comprises current condition of anemic economic recovery and continuously high unemployment. What is needed is to fix the fundamental problems in the economic and social structure of US domestic and global market system?

Here, I repeat the points I made earlier: “If Everything Else goes well,” President Obama’s latest introduction of “the Era of America’s Pacific Century and the Signing of US Free Trade Agreements including the one with South Korea (along with the revaluation / weakening of Chinese Yuen that will make US exports to the country cheaper and Chinese exports to this country more expensive than before) will contribute to boosting US exports to these countries, creating  more export-related middle class manufacturing jobs in this country, helping recover the health / balance of US economy, partially straightening up the skewed national employment structure away from its increased dependence on finance, retailing, and non – manufacturing / non-trade sector jobs toward more manufacturing, middle class jobs, and softening income inequality and middle class crisis.

The prospect of domestic economic growth  by domestic demand may be anemic; but the prospect of US economic growth potential by exploring US global competitiveness and foreign demand for US exports, spurred by the latest White House Initiatives, has not been tested/proved yet and worthy options to explore (unless global financial crisis suddenly worsens it). If these WH Initiatives work well in future, the positive outcomes will “not only boost “the devastated US economy” but also alleviate the US symptoms of unbalanced employment structure by moving it more toward manufacturing, trade sectors that value middle class workers, and soften income Inequality and middle class crisis.

How to Save the Drowning America: “Four Rules” by Robert Reich

America is drowning. It is on the way of going down, unless anybody does anything to change the current destructive ways of things work in this country.

Dr. Robert Reich offers “Four” Simple Rules of How To Prevent This Country from her “Disgraceful Fall”, a country which used to put the world under her command.

Supper Congressional Committee, Super Rich, Super Businessmen, whomever, should think about “Who let them have what they have now at first place?, “Who let them to grow bigger than who they used to be? It’s This Country. This Land. These people. Without them, super rich, super businessmen would not have existed “as who they are now.” If this land and people go down, super rich, super businessmen will go down together, because they will lose the source of their richness. Why don’t they pay back what they owe to the country, to people? Why don’t they let this country, the people to recover from their fall and remain well nourished enough so that they can enable super rich, super businesses to continue their business and earning profits. In a same way that farmers maintain their fields well nurished enough to make sure successful harvest every year. Wisemen will not hang on small profits but look into bigger picture in longer term. That’s what big people do. Don’t be small.

The “Middle Class Crisis” and “Anemic Economy” I : Dr. Robert Reich’s Tax Approach

Solving the “Middle Class Crisis” and spurring the Anemic Economic Growth, I believe, don’t have to have a single dominant solution; they may have “multiple, layers of series of approaches toward the problem solvings” in order to jointly, combinely  conqure or ease the symptoms.

I believe Dr. Reich suggested one possible approach to the problem solving, which will better balance out the deepened imbalance of resource / wealth distribution of this country among different economic classes, therefore improving the efficiency, fairness of domestic resource allocations.

“Dr. Reich’s conclusion that raising middle class purchasing power by lowering their tax rates while raising the rates at the top will help spur growth.” - Increasing middle class purchasing power means increasing their consumption, demand of industrial goods that will spur supply side production of goods and creating jobs, hiring more employees.

“My proposed 70 percent rate (I don’t have clear idea of what percent rate is appropriate though) would apply only to incomes over $15 million.! Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be ubjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate…..Importantly, my proposal calls for a substantial rate reduction for families with incomes under $100,000.”

“Since the early 1980s, a larger and larger share of total income has gone to the top (the richest 1 percent of Americans got 10 percent of total income in 1980, and get over 20 percent now). That’s left the vast middle class with insufficient purchasing power to boost the economy – without going deep into debt.

Of course, “This Specific Act of balancing resource/wealth distribution among different economic groups” will be a part of the comprehensive solutions to ease out the Middle Class Crisis.

Con: Everything seems to have advantage and disadvantage. Progressive, high tax on rich may seriously help with the issue of “Middle Class Crisis” by improving the fairness of resource/wealth distribution among different economic groups. But will it have the side effect of tempting some capital owners to fly? (maybe depends on the rate increase; was it IKEA owner who moved to Switzerland to avoid his home country’s high tax? or someone else, can not remember it well.). Also there’s the issue of mounting difficulties of campaign fund raising if a person wishes to carry this policy issue. It’s a complicate world. Take a big risk and win/lose big, or take a small risk and win/lose small, or stand in between… 

Source: Robert Reich, “The Growing Desperation of the Don’t-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich-Crowd”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-growing-desperation-o_b_878823.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=061711&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

the latest version of the end of the american empire on history channel not available on internet.

“Supply vs. Demand Side of American Economy”: which one to choose?

I have to remind that the “previous economic recovery package”, which had faced so much oppositions because of the “seemingly perceived” large size of it and had had to be compromised into a smaller size has become the partial source of the current anemic, not strong enough economic recovery, becoming a major roadblock for the next election. (at that time, it seemed to be a pragmatic, only solution to make it realize rather than disappear; I learned about pragmatism at that time) The Lesson from this experience seems to be: Following popular policies may be helpful, look good at the moment. But the time-tested consequences after sometime may not be pretty if the policies were not the right remedies / cure for the sicknesses, or not at right doses.

This time, there is a news about “U.S. Commerce Department Urges More Hiring Of American Workers By Foreign Companies” The news report says that:

“the Commerce Department urged the government to encourage more foreign companies to hire American workers — especially companies based in countries such as China that export to the United States more than they import. Economists at the Commerce Department said more investment by foreign companies could help revitalize the American economy by creating jobs and by producing more U.S. exports. If there’s a foreign-based car company, we would rather make their cars here than import their cars abroad ” ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/foreign-investment-jobs_n_877212.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=061511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief )

Probably, this business encouragement may help creating job of foreign sources, “But With Limitations” – The Sluggish Demand, Empty Consumer Pockets.”

Dr. Reigh’s below blog post may explain why:

Robert Reich, “Why the President Must Come Up With Demand-Side Solutions, And Not Go Over to the Supply Side, “  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-the-president-must-co_b_873973.html

“The problem isn’t on the supply side. It’s on the demand side. Businesses are reluctant to spend more and create more jobs because there aren’t enough consumers out there able and willing to buy what businesses have to sell.”

“businesses are already spending as much as they can justify economically. Almost two-thirds of the measly growth in the economy so far this year has come from businesses rebuilding their inventories. But without more consumer spending, there’s they won’t spend more. A robust economy can’t be built on inventory replacements.” “The reason consumers aren’t buying is because consumers’ paychecks are dropping, adjusted for inflation. And job losses are mounting. “

“consumer credit outstanding rose in April — mostly from record-high levels of student-loan debt and an up-tick in credit-card borrowing due to food and gas price increases outpacing wage gains. All this translates into a continuing crisis on the demand side. ” “How to get jobs back, then? By reigniting demand. Put more money in consumers’ pockets and help them renegotiate their mortgage loans.”

But more desirable policies would not necessarity gurantee their physical successes if they were not favored by public or became barriers for successful campaings or campaign fund raisings to get to the point of actually implementing them. Therefore, real life pictures become more complicate and there are this challenge of where to put the priority on.

“The Real News on Jobs”: Who’s Blame for Job Losses and Gains?

There is good news that US job situation and economy. Private sector created 222,000 new jobs in Feb 2011 and the unemployment rate decreased to the lowest point of 8.9% since April 2009. These new jobs were dominantly created in the sectors of “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants”. Economists say that the US economy needs 125,000 new jobs per month to maintain steady unemployment rate account for population growth, and 300,000 new jobs per month to get serious decrease in unemployment rate.(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_economy)

On the other hand, increasing oil prices, which is expected to continue through this summer, due to the political crises in Middle East and recent firing of public workers from state local governments are expected to be counteracting forces against this recovery of job-economy-condition.

Professor Robert Reich points out the problem of wage gap regarding the recent job growth (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-real-news-on-jobs_b_831493.html):

“New jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010. While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour. In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.”

This deteriorating wage gap is understandable if we considered that the most recently job creating sectors have been “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants” as mentioned above.

He points out:

Regarding Prof. Reich’s statement, “Conservative economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn’t that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It’s that they’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie.”

If we look into the detailed view of this “smaller smaller share of American worker’s pies, there are multi-layers of problems:

-The American Pie piece in Global Manufacturing Market is shrinking smaller and smaller.

-Inefficiences and bureacracies in most of US political, industrial entities and even labor unions have collectively contributed to the “dwindling American pies.” Loose government regulations on industries/business allowed these entities to take slices from workers’ pays and benefits, as seen in healthcare, housing/financial market messes, to bloat the wealth of high income groups while dwindling middle classes. But some part of labor also have their portion of blame for their shrinking pies: instead of focusing on working hard and increasing productivity to cut production costs and their global competitiveness, some of them (I am not talking about hard working workers. I praise them) has taken lazy approach of taking unheardly high paid vacation/sick days of almost one month out of twelve months while demanding high pays/benefits and protection of workers’ right, which seems to be inappropriate abuse of their right to protect their jobs. All these inefficiencies, bureaucracies from every entities sum up to “Slashed American Pie.” Everybody demand their right but don’t meet their performance requirements.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

always been waiting.

Chinese Consumers in the Era of China As #2 Super Economy

Recently, China became the number 2 world economic superpower after the United States.

In an article, “The Truth About China as #2″, Dr. Robert Reich talks about China’s production and consumption expansion as below:

“But Chinese wages are so meager relative to China’s productive capacity that it would take a tsunami of labor agitation to push pay up to where it should be.

China is now the world’s largest market for everything from cars to cell phones – but that’s not because these items are within easy reach of the average Chinese. It’s because, out of 1.3 billion people, a couple of hundred million can save enough to buy them.

If the wages and purchasing power of Chinese households continues to rise more slowly than China’s capacity to produce goods and services — more slowly than China’s corporate profits and the government’s share of national income — we’re all in trouble.

Think of China as a giant production machine that’s growing 10 percent a year (this year, somewhat less). The machine sucks in more and more raw materials and components from rest of world — it’s now the world’s #1 buyer of iron ore and copper, and close to the #1 importer of crude oil — and spews out a growing mountain of stuff, along with huge environmental problems.” (source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-truth-about-china-as-_b_684004.html)

I wonder whether Dr. Reich’s view of Chinese consumer is too simplistic. China appears to have huge dichotomy of economic development levels because of extreme urbanization/industrialization in cities while most rural areas suffer lack of infrastructure, industrial/employment sources, unimaginable poverty, resembling African poverty and starvation.

Chinese people in urban areas get along well with fast increasing wages, available modern appliances and lifestyles, the corresponding consumption. Chinese in urban areas or cities imitate lifestyles of people in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or New York. While urbanization has been growing fast in China, it is the vast size of Chinese rural areas and their consumers’ extreme poverty, starvation that drag down the overall consumption level of Chinese consumers.

It will change over time depending on the speed of China’s urbanization/industrialization process.
China, in general, is extremely underdeveloped and have to undergo hell of industrialization process couttry-wide for Chinese’s individual average level of consumption to reach the level of other industrializing and industrialized countries. Although China now reached the #2 world economy status after the US, in terms of the level of economic growth or maturity, still the country is in the stage of early teenage level, I would say, which means unimaginable potential for further growth over prolonged period until next super power rises.

In terms of China’s production growth, it will also depend on the world market condition. During recession like this, world demand for Chinese goods either slows down or stagnates, which limit Chinese expansion of production.

Robert Reich: “Joe Barton and the Big Big Debate”

“Mr. Joe Barton created “a Hillarious National Joke,” didn’t he?“

There are two questions I’d like answer.

Question A: What do you think about the current political trend of Misleading of “Regulations on Big Corporations” as “Big Government”

My Response: Yes, definitely, we the public have noticed it. You know? Fortunately, there are two sides of everything. The tragic meltdowns of everything we have experienced for the last a few years are sad. But they became the stepping stones, engines of policy reforms to cure the chronic structural problems of this country that, otherwise, would have continued sickness of this country. Now, people don’t think about whether big government is good or bad. People are demanding stricter regulations on financial sector and oil industry and demand political leaders to get out of their ambiguous positions between corporates and people. Isn’t this great?

The deeper the pain is, the deeper, more fundamental the reforms become ! No pain, no change !

Question B. What do you think about “100% publicly financed campaigns for national office?

My Response: A good idea !

Although lobbyists will lose there current jobs, “Campaign Finance Reform,” “Publicly financed political campaigns” will definitely drive political leaders to tune on what the public wants instead of what corporates want, what’s good for the country, and improve fairness and justice in politics.

Additionally, “Campaign Finance Reform” will become a great chance to transform these lobbyests into future’s promising workers that will be far more productive and contribute to the society by working in other industries. For example, they can use their strategies, skills in either philanthropic industries, humanitarian industries (?) or in resolving world issues such as terrorism (they can lobby terrorists against terrorism), threats of nuclear arms (they can work as US diplomats to lobby, persuade the Iranian Gov. against nuclear arms in favor of superior traditional weapons or no weapon at all), the wars, moral corruptions, and AIDs in Africa (they can lobby rebels against premarital acts and impregnating single ladies with AIDs and babies and deserting them, etc)….If lobbyists’ tenacity and shrewd tactics can be used in right places for right causes, the world would be far better place !”

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Regarding Prof. Robert Reigh’s “The Rebirth of Regulation.”

Professor Robert Reigh says that recent BP’s oil spill, Massey’s mine disaster, and Goldman’s alleged fraud, all are the outcomes of government deregulation of businesses and few or low penalties for business misconduct over the three decades. He states:

“When shareholders demand the highest returns possible and executive pay is linked to stock performance, many companies will do whatever necessary to squeeze out added profits. And that will spell disaster – giant oil spills, terrible coal-mine disasters, and Wall Street meltdowns — unless the nation has tough regulations backed up by significant penalties….After thirty years of deregulation, it’s time for the rebirth of regulation: Not heavy-handed and unnecessarily costly regulation, but regulation that’s up to the task of protecting the public from companies and executives that will do almost anything to make a buck.”

Full Text: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-rebirth-of-regulation_b_561962.html

In the middle of economic meltdown, though it seems to be heading toward recovery, his proposal sounds very convincing.

The problem with extreme government deregulation seems to be, as the economic history of last decades has shown, it has actually created market barriers, prevented market from functioning efficiently, smoothly, properly.

Instead of clearing barriers for market to function best, deregulation has rather caused market crashes, economic meltdowns. It is because careless deregulation has ultimately empowered human greediness over reasoning and conscience, paved ways for business corruptions and misallocated nation’s resources, instead of motivating entrepreneurs to re-invest, re-oil their business structure and helping, promoting corporations to function at their best not only for their own sake and but also for their customers.

When companies collapse, are their CEOs happy? Because they already earned enough? Hopely not. There should be the limitations of corporate joy-rides without taking responsibilities for their actions. They have been acting like children. It’s time for them to start to act like grown-ups.

Who’s Killing Financial Reform?

According to Dr. Robert Reigh, “during the 2008 elections, Wall Street showered Democratic candidates with well over $88 million and Republicans with over $67 million, putting the Street right up there with the insurance industry as among the nation’s largest equal-opportunity donors.”

As far as congressmen are receiving campaign donations from corporations, it doesn’t seem to be possible for them to vote against, regulate corporations. The current experience of recession and blind recklessness and near bankruptcies of big banks reminds that politics should be independent from corporations and only individuals, not corporations, should be allowed for political campaign contributions if this country intends to see justice, right politics for people. Individual citizen in this country, including those in corporations, can contribute to political campaigns and vote as individuals. They don’t have to be double-counted as an individual and as corporations.

There should be “Separation between Politics and Corporations as well as between the State and Religion.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost